Social institutions according to Zygmunt Bauman and Alain Touraine

Abstract

The existence of social institutions demonstrates the presence practical rules of functioning of a given society. Social institutions as a component of social bonds should serve to bind communities that provide the individual with conditions for existence and give a sense of security. The diversity of types of social institutions results from their regulation of different spheres of social life. The quality of living conditions depends on the efficiency of the social institutions. The state of social and economic cohesion at the various stages of social development is influenced by the advanced institutionalization. The survival of biologically and socially conditioned community is guaranteed by full exchange and mutuality. Difficulties of exchange and rupture of reciprocity are due to excessive social inequalities – on the one hand, poverty and darkness at the bottom of the social ladder, and on the other hand tiring abundance at the top of this ladder. The fall of the community in the information society is determined by the scarcity and disruption of social ties leading to the isolation and de-socialisation of individuals as a result of the substitution of contact in the real sphere with contacts in cyberspace.